Gillard’s conversion and politics as grand theatre

It’s impossible to argue against the idea of a royal commission into sexual abuse of children. It’s like arguing against the need to combat evil. Little wonder politicians are now falling over themselves, many abruptly and belatedly, to announce support.

After all, everyone has to agree in principle. The abuse of innocence is far more common than anyone admitted over decades. Cover-ups have festered, prolonging and extending the pain. Moral and institutional failings in dealing with this must be addressed.

Just what a Commonwealth commission into “institutional responses into instances and allegations of child sexual abuse’’ is expected to produce is, however, much harder to pin down. The government’s announcement is in that sense the latest example of politics as grand theatre.

It is popular with the audience. The show will go on for years, featuring villains galore. It will be cathartic for many victims – and for many institutions, including, most obviously, the Catholic Church in Australia. It will become a focal point for community anger without too many specific solutions.

That leaves everyone in authority desperately trying to play their roles without stepping on predictable political fault lines.
Tony Abbott
, for instance, is determined not to be depicted as a Catholic apologist for sexual abuse in the way
Julia Gillard
portrayed him as a misogynist.

It’s why, sensing rapidly escalating community and media momentum, the Opposition Leader pre-empted the Prime Minister’s announcement with his backing for the idea. This was as long as a royal commission wasn’t limited to any one institution. Guess which one?

It’s still treacherous territory for the Opposition Leader. Many voters already have doubts about the intensity of Abbott’s religious beliefs. He attracts suspicion, particularly among women, that he has strict and conservative views on social issues, notably abortion, which will somehow influence his political decisions. Yet as time goes on, he seems less adept – rather than more – at outgrowing the caricature of “Captain Catholic’’.

That he needs to do so to appear more “mainstream’’ is a triumph of political positioning for Labor. It’s not politically permissible for the Liberals to mention, for example, that being unmarried and an atheist is not particularly mainstream either. But from now until the election, the political debate will contain a constant if often unstated reference to Abbott’s Catholicism, including his brief career as a would-be priest.

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And unfortunately for Abbott, Cardinal
George Pell
is far from the best ally to have in such highly sensitive manoeuvring about just what tolerance means in modern Australian society.

Their long-standing personal association is well known – to Labor’s delight. The traditional strong Catholic influence on the right wing of the Labor Party, especially in NSW, is treated as a minor internal matter by comparison.

Pell may also argue correctly that he is only responsible for the archdiocese of Sydney, but the technicalities of this will be lost on most people. As the most senior church official in Australia, his approach has become synonymous with the perception of arrogance rather than compassion. His weekly newspaper column declaring that the church is “serious about dealing with sexual abuse and responding appropriately’’ is a classic of the too-little-too-late genre.

Of course, the Catholic Church is not the only institution guilty of gross and repeated breaches of trust, along with a systemic reluctance to properly punish perpetrators. From the Scouts to remote indigenous communities to schoolyards everywhere – and most particularly within the supposed safety of the suburban family home – the risk of child abuse is endemic, the protracted failure to protect ever more evident.

But it’s the Catholic Church’s numerous failings that remain the most visible – and the easiest to attack. Examples of obstructionist behaviour of church and police in dealing with abuse in the Hunter Valley, for example, demonstrates a rejection of the need for radical change even now.

The church’s good works and the devoted service of many priests become subsumed by horrifying instances of individual venality and layers of official corruption or, at best, official misjudgments. This also fits neatly into a latent but still noticeable cultural undercurrent that is anti-religious in general and anti-Catholic in particular.

The Gillard government will try to avoid the suggestion it is playing to this sentiment to open a religious front in addition to its previous class and gender rhetoric. It knows that overly enthusiastic criticism of the church will unsettle a lot of voters. Gillard will instead focus on the unassailable rhetoric of heartbreak and evil. Yet despite her overnight (sorry, weekend) conversion to a royal commission, it’s actually state welfare agencies and state police forces that have primary responsibility for the problem. It’s why several state governments have had or are having their own inquiries. How will this all work in practice? Details, details . . . to be sorted in another political lifetime.